The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is an enchanting experiment in adaptation. It’s not adapting a novel of J.R.R. Tolkien’s, however quite two pages from his Appendices, which lay out the final nice stand of one in all Rohan’s most famed kings, Helm Hammerhand (voiced by Succession‘s Brian Cox).
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In this part of the Appendices, Tolkien writes {that a} rival lord named Freca (voiced by Shaun Dooley) proposed that his son Wulf (voiced by Luke Pasqualino) marry Helm’s daughter. Not solely does Helm reject the proposal outright — he additionally kills Freca with one mighty punch. (His identify is Hammerhand for a purpose.) Wulf vows vengeance and spends the following few years assembling a mighty military. Then, he takes town of Edoras, and pushes Helm and the Rohirrim again to the Hornburg, the place a protracted, merciless siege awaits.
It’s a fantastic story, one which sees Helm singlehandedly terrorizing Wulf’s males till his final breath. But to make it right into a full-length movie, screenwriters Phoebe Gittins and Arty Papageorgiou (who took over from authentic writers Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews) needed to make some modifications from the unique textual content, increasing on it in some locations, and slicing it in others.
To be taught extra about The War of the Rohirrim‘s adaptation course of, Mashable spoke with Gittins and Papageorgiou in regards to the option to heart Helm’s daughter Héra (voiced by Gaia Wise), the function of The Lord of the Rings‘ Éowyn (Miranda Otto, returning in voiceover) as narrator, and extra.
Helm’s daughter Héra — unnamed in Tolkien’s work — takes the lead in The War of the Rohirrim.
Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
While you may suppose two pages of fictional historical past is not lots for writers to attract from, Gittins and Papageorgiou disagree.
“It’s truly so dense,” Papageourgiou informed Mashable in a Zoom name alongside Gittins.
Gittins added: “It’s Tolkien! The power of his world-building means there’s all the time going to be a thread that pulls one other thread that pulls one other thread.”
One of the threads from the unique textual content The War of the Rohirrim pulls on is that of Helm’s unnamed daughter, talked about simply as soon as in Tolkien’s writing. (“Do not search for tales of her within the previous songs,” Éowyn tells us in her opening narration. “There are none.”) It was producer Philippa Boyens, who co-wrote The Lord of the Rings motion pictures and can be Gittins’ mom, who steered that the movie dive into what her story may appear to be. After all, the battle between Wulf and Helm begins on account of a wedding proposal involving her.
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“We felt Tolkien actually did place her on the coronary heart of this battle,” Gittins mentioned. “It is her story largely. Numerous this warfare is due to her. And as soon as we received our heads round that, it turned very thrilling to see what we may do with this character, and see what we may deliver to the desk along with her.”
Héra’s involvement permits The War of the Rohirrim to additional flesh out Helm’s dynamic along with his circle of relatives, in addition to pay tribute to Rohan’s shieldmaidens. But it additionally solves a little bit of a logistical drawback by way of find out how to carry The War of the Rohirrim ahead following Helm’s ultimate sacrifice.
We felt Tolkien actually did place [Héra] on the coronary heart of this battle.
“When you have a look at the textual content, you realize the destiny of Helm Hammerhand. You know it is epic, and it is tragic, and it is iconic, however it did not actually give us an ending,” Gittins defined. “The worth at stake, the Rohirrim, are nonetheless behind these partitions within the Hornburg. You cannot simply go away them there. So who can see this story via for us?”
The reply turned Héra, the one one in all Helm’s youngsters whose destiny is left unsure within the Appendices. Bringing her to the forefront allowed The War of the Rohirrim to discover a brand new type of warfare within the latter a part of its siege sequence.
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“We get to see the protection of the Hornburg from a nontraditional normal or chief or commander,” Papageorgiou mentioned.
The War of the Rohirrim reveals us a special type of assault on the Hornburg — with some callbacks.
Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
The War of the Rohirrim just isn’t the primary time Lord of the Rings followers have seen the Hornburg beneath assault. That honor falls to the Battle of Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers, a sequence so monumental that something remotely resembling it has some huge sneakers to fill.
“That is untouchable within the movies,” Gittins mentioned.
So how would The War of the Rohirrim deliver one thing new to an assault on the Hornburg? By focusing in on the brutal, months-long attrition of the siege. (For comparability, the Battle of Helm’s Deep lasts one evening.) As the Long Winter rages on, Helm leaves the Hornburg nightly and fights his manner via components of Wulf’s camp. Meanwhile, Wulf has his males construct a siege tower that can finally breach the partitions of the maintain.
“It was thrilling for us to enter that house in a deeper manner,” Gittins mentioned. “What we discovered actually cool was that there is struggling on either side within the stalemate, and sooner or later it may break. There is that this nice horror that begins to unfold the place the Rohirrim are seeing their impending doom.”
“There’s this sense of a ticking clock,” Papageorgiou added.
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Wulf’s presence on the Hornburg is a deviation from Tolkien’s work, the place he stays on the throne in Edoras till his defeat by the hands of Helm’s nephew Fréaláf (voiced by Laurence Ubong Williams). Here, although, his vengeance drives him to pursue Helm and Héra all the way in which to the Hornburg himself, intensifying the standoff. It additionally brings the ultimate conflict between Fréaláf and Wulf’s males to the Hornburg, as an alternative of leaving it in Edoras.
Fréaláf and his military’s arrival on the battle echoes Gandalf and Éomer’s arrival at Helm’s Deep in The Two Towers — they even experience down the identical hill! Meanwhile, Héra’s concept to distract Wulf with a duel (a brand new addition to the story) calls to thoughts a smaller scale of Aragorn’s plan to attract Sauron’s eye away from Frodo in The Return of the King. But these aren’t the one references to the unique Lord of the Rings trilogy that Gittins and Papageorgiou added to The War of the Rohrrim.
The War of the Rohirrim brings Éowyn again … as a narrator.
Credit: Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Tolkien’s appendices are introduced as simple histories. The War of the Rohirrim provides a twist to that by presenting its story as a story informed by Éowyn. It’s a becoming alternative, on condition that Héra is principally Éowyn 2.0. Both are headstrong daughters of Rohan’s king throughout a time of disaster, every determined to assist their folks even when their fathers’ protectiveness could maintain them again.
“We knew we would wish to attract inspiration for [Héra] from someplace, and we requested ourselves the query, ‘Who would have paved the way in which for the likes of Éowyn?'” Gittins mentioned. “So it simply felt like a extremely pure match, given that we might drawn a lot inspiration from Éowyn to Héra, that we use Éowyn as a story system as properly.”
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Éowyn’s narration frames the movie as a narrative handed down via generations, in a alternative that Papageorgiou mentioned “spoke to the storytelling side of the Rohirrim tradition.”
There’s an added layer of myth-making right here. Since this story is now legend, any of its exaggerations or deviations from Tolkien’s textual content may merely be considered because the legend warping and altering with every telling.
How does The War of the Rohirrim match into the broader context of Middle-earth?
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Éowyn is not the one acquainted face — or actually, voice — popping up in War of the Rohirrim. Saruman (voiced by the late Christopher Lee in a line taken from archival footage) makes an look at Fréaláf’s coronation, simply as he does within the Appendices. But we additionally get a touch at one other wizard from The Lord of the Rings: Gandalf. He writes to Héra on the finish of the movie, hoping for extra details about the orcs she encountered stealing rings behind the Hornburg.
Gandalf’s inclusion was one other concept of Boyens’, in an effort to gesture out to the broader world of Middle-earth, and likewise present a counterpoint to Saruman’s cameo. “If you are going to introduce the darkish, you must introduce the sunshine as properly,” mentioned Papageorgiou. “You cannot have Saruman with out Gandalf.”
The wizards are simply a few of many Lord of the Rings particulars Gittins and Papageorgiou incorporate into War of the Rohirrim. Also current are the ring-stealing orcs, the Great Eagles, and a runaway Mûmakil (or Oliphaunt), every a touch on the warfare to return, in addition to proof of Tolkien’s huge, interconnected legendarium.
“Even the smallest element will launch a geopolitical rabbit warren of investigation,” Papageorgiou mentioned. “That’s truly the exhausting half. It’s not a query of, ‘How did you make this variety of paragraphs right into a characteristic movie?’ It’s extra, ‘Well, how did not we make six movies?'”
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is now in theaters.
